Since
George W. Bush assumed the US presidency, his regime has defied
international law and wreaked murderous havoc on developing nations. Many
political pundits have pointed to the neoconservative agenda as announced
in the Project for the New American Century’s
unabashed call for a Pax Americana. But Bush and some of his
circle also claim to be taking cues from the Christian God. If this is
true, then presumably Christian teaching is influencing the only
superpower and hence the rest of the world.

The Bible forms the core of Christian
thought. It is a selective compilation of tales that has had and has
stupefying transformative powers in the world. As such, an understanding
of the Bible is important. Toronto-based Tony Malone is an accomplished
musician and freethinker who devoted several years researching rare and
valuable biblical works. The result was his two richly illustrated books
The Bible For People Who Hate The Bible. The title is rather
delimiting, but the author intends the books for people who don’t want to
read the Bible and who are offended by large religious groups [disclaimer:
the present writer feels no hatred for books, has read the Bible, and is
unoffended by people’s choice of religious affiliation].

Book One tackles the Old Testament and the
second book scrutinizes the New Testament.Malone explores various texts and themes in depth and is unafraid
to state his conclusions, some of which will likely astound the reader.

Malone
writes that the Old Testament is built on a “shaking and bizarre”
foundation. He cites myriad examples to support his contention. For
example, Malone considers the tale of baby Moses being placed in the Nile
to be a plagiarism of the
tale of Sargon the Great Akkadian king who as a child was floated in
the Euphrates. Malone also questions whether there was more than one Moses
in the Old Testament.

To understand Moses, Malone maintains, it is
necessary to remove “God” from the picture. Throughout the books, Malone
prefers to use god’s name as it appears in the original Hebrew texts: YHWH
with vowels inserted. Yahweh is portrayed as a racist god, a god who
sanctions ethnic cleansing to create a Lebensraum and genocide to
protect the supposed racial purity of his chosen people. Malone calculates
the slaughter of at least 100,000 Midianites by the Israelites on Yahweh’s
orders “because one of their women dared to love an Israelite man.” The
genocide included the slaughter of all non-virgins, with the virgins taken
as chattel -- 32 to be sacrificed to Yahweh. Malone comments: “It is
genocide on an exciting [sic] new scale, dwarfing their slaughters of the
Amorites and Bashanites.”

Although not dealt with by Malone, the fury
of Yahweh at this interracial mingling emphasizes a socio-biological
oddity about Jewishness, in that Jewishness is understood to denote both
ethnicity and religion. It calls into question what exactly is meant by a
“chosen people.” Yahweh chose the Jews out of his love for them
(Deuteronomy 7:7-8), and yet it is theoretically possible, based on
religious affiliation, to enter into chosen status through conversion to
Judaism.

The “chosen people” status is
lamentable in that it presents a deity who plays favorites and this
favoritism invites ethnocentrism and its ugly offsprings: cultural
imperialism, racism, and xenophobia. Examples of each are replete and
described in Malone’s books.

Malone, however, throws a wrench into the
belief of racial purity, as he ponders the controversy of whether Moses
was an Israelite or a Midianite Arab, a topic previously stirred up by
Sigmund Freud among others.

*******

Malone points out, that with the possible
exception of Mark’s gospel, the New Testament is a series of essays on the
purported life of Jesus by people who never met him. Much like the Old
Testament, the New Testament contravenes progressive values. Woman is
subordinate to man; slavery is condoned (and, in fact, slaves are exhorted
to honor their masters); and, those disobedient to God are turned into
homosexuals as punishment. But the message of Jesus is one of liberating
people from the cult of Law.

The major messenger for spreading Jesus’
word to Gentiles was Paul. Malone portrays Paul as a figure who cashed in
on a Jesus cult, inventing his own version of Jesus’ message, which he
took on the road. Malone wonders about Paul’s sudden disappearance, with
the contradictory legacy of Jesus as an idol.

Malone, however, argues that Jesus’ message
was only for Jews. Based on Jesus’ interaction with a Syrophoenician woman
(Mark 7:24-30), which Malone describes as “the biggest paradox in the
character of Jesus,” he deduces that Jesus is a racist like other Old
Testament leaders. A historical stream of consciousness is indicated: a
recent poll by the Dahaf Institute for Madar, the Palestinian Center
for Israel Studies, showed that a majority of Israeli Jews wants Arab
Israelis to leave Palestine (renamed Israel by its ethnic cleansers).

Malone depicts a Jesus exasperated by his
apostles’ difficulty at grasping his parables. When Peter tells Jesus that
he considers him to be the messiah, Jesus tells him to keep quiet about
this wrongful conclusion (Mark 8:27-30).

Malone provides an unusual interpretation of
who the Son of Man and Messiah are. The Messiah is the Son of Man, which
is the nation of Israel. This puts a different slant on what Jesus meant
when he said the Son of Man would be raised from the dead.

The author, however, regards the
resurrection as metaphorical and views it as a later addition to the Old
Testament based on Egyptian mythology.

Apocrypha and spiritualism aside, much of
Jesus’ agenda promoted progressive values. Malone notes that Jesus railed
against the capitalism practiced by the temple priests. Indeed, the
behavior of possessive individualism contradicts the teaching of Jesus.
Malone also interestingly explicates the infinitesimal odds, clearly
enounced by Jesus, against a rich man entering heaven -- that of a camel
passing through the eye of a needle (Mark 10:25). Jesus reserved great
praise for the oppressed; when an old widow dropped a few coins into the
collection box, Jesus lauded this act as manifold more generous than any
rich person’s charity (Mark 12:41-44).

Malone holds that Jesus’ message was against
personal aggrandizement. In Mark 9:33-35, Jesus responded to a dispute
among the apostles as to who was greater: “Whoever thinks he should be the
most important has to first take his place as the least important.” It
seems that such reasoning should also be applicable at a societal level?
Logical inference suggests that an ethnicity that claims to be a “chosen
race” should then strive to act as though it was the “least chosen race.”

The author emphasizes the preeminence of
Mark’s gospel, but charges that it has been tampered with. The first
tampering accentuated is the falsehood that the gospel must be spread to
all nations. Jesus, Malone iterates, is on Earth to preach to the
“children” (Jews) and not the “dogs” (Gentiles).

Malone identifies the prophets’ plan for
Israelites to gain authority over other peoples; this was Yahweh’s
promise. This provokes the question: how does this plan square with
Gentiles being called to Jesus? Furthermore, what Gentile would go along
with this? In the context of today, the neoconservatives’ designs for the
Middle East mimic Zionist Jews’ aspirations for the region. From Malone’s
text, a conclusion leaps out; the New Testament turns anti-Judaism on its
head: Gentiles are, in fact, protecting anti-Gentiles.

In 313 CE, Constantine Augustus issued the
Edict of Milan that legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire.
Eventually, the Romans co-opted the Israelites’ Old Testament plan and
through Jesus they pursued a new route to world power, a route followed by
the Catholic Church. Although the Vatican’s influence still pervades
today, the seat of imperialist power is in Washington. The
neoconservatives have rallied the support of fundamentalist Christianity
to implement their imperialist agenda.

The fervent Christianity aroused by the
Bible poses a palpable danger. Malone states, “The Bible is a weapon … one
of the most frightening tools ever developed by man.” This is the
importance of Malone’s “pop literature.” His two books contain a wealth of
information and conclusions that provoke contemplation relevant to many
important world events.

Kim
Petersen
is a writer living in Nova Scotia, Canada. He can be reached at:
kimpete@start.no.